FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date Published: Thursday, June 23, 2022
Washington, D.C. Thursday, June 23, 2022 — Today, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) released Draft Guidelines for Mitigating Impacts to Commercial and Recreational Fisheries on the Outer Continental Shelf Pursuant to 30 CFR Part 585. The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) commends BOEM for pursuing an effort to address the critical impacts to fishing from offshore wind energy development. The draft guidelines provide several new criteria for mitigating these impacts, including burying static cables to a minimum depth of six feet, avoiding rock mattressing, and implementing structure-free setbacks between lease areas with differing layouts. They also mark the federal government’s first explicit acknowledgement that offshore wind energy developers should compensate fishing communities for losses to their businesses and livelihoods from these energy projects, costing billions of dollars and taking up hundreds of square miles of ocean habitat.
Regrettably, the potential effectiveness of these proposed guidelines is all but nullified by the fact that they are mere suggestions to individual offshore wind energy developers, rather than binding requirements. BOEM has taken the position that it lacks authority to regulate developers’ projects in a way that would mitigate fishing impacts, despite its clear mandate under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to “provide[] for the prevention of interference with reasonable uses” including fishing. BOEM further erroneously asserts that it cannot implement regional mitigation plans.
While we welcome any first step toward improving attention to fisheries conflicts, in form and content, it is overall difficult to find evidence of the diligent input provided by the fishing industry in these guidelines. Scores of fisheries experts requested federal oversight beyond voluntary guidelines and asked that mitigation be designed to address cumulative impacts. RODA also produced the only report to date assembling the expertise of a large national cross-section of fishing industry members on effective guidelines and principles regarding compensatory impact fees for the entire seafood industry, from crew members to vessels and shoreside businesses, and provided this valuable information to BOEM.
In that report and fishing industry comment letters, we universally asked for the development of equitable, transparent, inclusive, and intelligible processes to determine mitigation principles. This included strong opposition to relying on a formal “notice and comment” process to address fisheries mitigation and compensation. We also explicitly requested that fishermen be able to directly provide their local ecological and business knowledge into this process. BOEM has not adjusted or improved its process despite those requests.
Fishing groups across the country unanimously stated that the most important consideration for BOEM to reduce impacts was that mitigation must follow a stepwise approach, prioritizing immediate action on the first step, avoidance, which entails developing measurable criteria to site offshore wind infrastructure off of fishing grounds. The draft guidelines do not address this primary need, and instead focus mainly on compensation. These avoidance criteria are the most pressing need for coastal states and regions that just now are identifying areas for leasing, as opposed to others that have been engaged in offshore wind development discussions for years. BOEM’s draft guidance does not distinguish between the two. Again, “notice and comment” is not the proper approach to equitable and durable mitigation for regions in variable stages.
RODA’s final request was for standardized compensation strategies that are equitable and based on science. While the draft guidelines suggest the use of third-party administrators, they leave every detail of such administration to the full discretion of developers. This directly conflicts with our direct request that “any framework must be co-designed with impacted parties.” It makes little sense for for-profit developers (lessees) to be able determine whom to compensate; yet the draft guidelines do just that.
We need enforceable and effective measures to avoid, minimize, mitigate, and compensate for offshore wind’s considerable impacts to seafood production. BOEM’s draft guidelines, and especially the process and scope of their development, appear to do little to solve this urgent problem. We will gather additional feedback from seafood producers across the country in coming weeks to prepare more detailed suggestions, and look forward to working with BOEM and other parties to improve and strengthen oversight of offshore wind energy activities to protect our existing coastal and fishing communities.
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About Responsible Offshore Development Alliance
Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) is a broad membership-based coalition of fishing industry associations and fishing companies — across the United States — committed to improving the compatibility of new offshore development with their businesses. The alliance works to directly collaborate with relevant regulatory agencies, scientists, and others to coordinate science and policy approaches to managing development of the Outer Continental Shelf in a way that minimizes conflicts with existing traditional and historical fishing.
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Contact:
info@rodafisheries.org